Diary of a Shopkeeper, 14th April 2024
This way to Beaujolais… Looking east from the windmill.
This is the time of year when wine merchants across the country revamp their shelves. Partly it’s because we’ve all been away at the producers’ tastings and importers’ trade fairs, and have discovered exciting new wines we want to share with our customers. But it’s also about the weather. Hard to believe today, as haily buckies rattle against the window and rashy bulders shake the bonny buds of may, but spring is supposed to be here. Temperatures should be rising, and with them the thirst for a new style of wine.
Long dark nights and cold air calls for robust and hearty food: roasts and stews and long-simmered curries. To accompany them you need similarly full-bodied wines: Shiraz from Barossa Valley, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, big oaky Malbec from Mendoza. But with spring creeping in, lighter food seems more natural. Cue more fish, white meat, vegetable mains, and even salad. But you can’t drink a 15% Zinfandel with chicken breast and steamed asparagus. Well, you can, of course, if that’s what you fancy. But to flatter the food and reflect the lightsome ambience of the season, a fresher, juicier wine seems more natural. White wine lovers can carry on regardless, but if you prefer red, there are many less familiar grapes you might turn to
From Italy you could go for Corvina from Veneto in the north, or Frappato from down in Sicily. From Spain there’s Bobal and Mencia. Next door in Portugal, experiment with Baga from Bairrada rather than the Port-like wines of the Douro Valley. Almost anything from New Zealand is worth a try, especially their superb Pinot Noirs: packed with fruity flavour, but never too powerful. Above all, though, head down through eastern France to a grape called Gamay and an area called Beaujolais. It’s a beautiful landscape of low hills, folded valleys and winding roads, stretching between the classic wine appellations of Burgundy in the north, and the great gastronomic capital of Lyon in the south.
Gamay was originally grown in the prime Côte d’Or vineyards, but in 1395, Philippe the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, banned it from his fiefdom, claiming it was full of ‘very great and horrible harshness’. He was right that Gamay has a natural tendency to produce wines of high acidity. However, with the right approach – and especially using a form of fermentation called carbonic maceration – this potential shortcoming can be turned into a great asset. Acidity brings freshness, and though the wines of Beaujolais are often ripe and fruity they are never jammy or cloying. Neither are they tannic and drying. Low to medium alcohol levels of 13% or even 12.5% are common, a rarity in these days of global warming. All in all, it’s an easy-drinking, adaptable and delicious wine – perfectly suited to spring and summer. What’s more, it’s modestly priced, unlike its famous neighbours to the north.
Which is why I am slightly worried to learn that this Wednesday, the winemakers of Moulin-à-Vent (one of the ten villages that claim Beaujolais’s best vineyards) are submitting an official request to the authorities to have 14 areas designated as ‘premier cru’ – the first, or best, vineyards. So far, wines from this region are categorised and labelled as either Beaujolais (from anywhere in the area), Beaujolais-Villages (from land around one or more of those ten top villages) and finally from the individual villages themselves: Moulin-à-Vent, Chénas, Saint-Amour and so on. The quality rises the more specific you get, but it’s a simple three-tier system, easy to understand and navigate. Having 14 individually named sub-regions within one village alone would complicate things tremendously. And if Moulin-à-Vent gets permission to do this, you can be sure that other villages will swiftly follow suit. No one in Chiroubles or Fleurie wants to cede the quality-crown to their windmill-flaunting neighbours.
The drive to make better and better wine is admirable. The desire to have good wine identified as such is understandable – and in a commercial sense, essential, to justify the higher prices that painstaking, hands-on winemaking necessitates. But good doesn’t always mean serious. Not all good wine should have to wait years before tasting its best. A certain kind of goodness inheres in a wine that is true to its place, and its grape, and its traditions, but is still cheap enough for almost everyone to afford.
Such has been the unique goodness of Beaujolais for centuries. Long may it continue – long enough, at least, for summer to come to Orkney.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 18th April 2024. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.